Postal service still struggling to fix problem hampering some operations

Tony RaapOf The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (TNS)

An Internet outage is causing problems at U.S. Post Offices across the country, a spokesman said Friday morning.

The problems are intermittent, rendering some post offices unable to take credit cards while others remain fully functional, spokesman Tad Kelley said. Another spokeswoman said the federal agency's email and other internal systems are experiencing problems.

"What we're trying to do right now is contact our post offices to see what is available," Kelley said.

The outage does not affect deliveries, which are continuing on schedule, Kelley said. Problems began Thursday evening, he said.

The failure of credit card terminals turned some post offices into cash-only operations, Kelley said, The outage hasn't affected the ATMs that are located in some post offices, he said.

"I couldn't give you a percentage of who's online and who's not. Some are working. Some are slowly coming back," Kelley said. "We are installing signage explaining what the situation is" at affected offices.

As of Friday evening, a notice on the U.S. Postal Service website said the outage was still causing issues.